


Deserving

by Mithen



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leon is searching for D, but some things can only be found when you stop seeking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deserving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [water_bby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_bby/gifts).



The shotgun blast thundered near Leon Orcot’s ear as he threw himself sideways, his own gun already out of the holster. He hit the floor, rolled, and came up with the gun leveled at the guy’s face, too close for the shotgun to get off another round. “Drop it,” he snarled, his finger tight on the trigger, fury making his voice guttural.

The man looked at the gun muzzle resting nearly on his nose, his eyes crossing slightly, and the shotgun clattered to the ground. Leon grabbed him and shoved him against the wall. “I’m making a citizen’s arrest, you sick bastard.”

The stench in the shed was overwhelming, a thick miasma that made Leon’s guts clench. Behind him he could hear desperate scratching and barking, and he knew if he turned around he’d see it again: row after row of stacked cages, stuffed full of wild-eyed, thin dogs. About a quarter of them were pregnant females, most of the rest were puppies, bred to sell to pet stores around the St. Louis area. There were probably seventy or eighty dogs in the shed, and their dark, liquid eyes followed Leon mournfully or suspiciously as he called in the local police and had them take the puppy mill owner away.

“Oh God,” sighed the woman from Animal Control, gazing around the shed an hour later. “What a disaster.”

“You’ll find homes for them, right?”

The woman shook her head, staring at him. “Homes for eighty-three abused dogs? It’s not possible. It would take months, even years. And we don’t have the facilities for it. No,” she said miserably, “We’re going to have to put them all down.”

 _”What?”_ She looked at Leon, surprised at the vehemence in his tone. “No way, you’re not going to kill all these puppies.”

She shrugged, her eyes sad. “There’s nowhere to put them, Mr. Orcot. No one to care for them. If there were...”

With a sinking feeling in his chest, Leon looked at the caged dogs. One of the large females cocked her head at him and let out a small, quizzical whine, her eyebrows twitching.

And so Leon Orcot found himself responsible for eighty-three Labrador retrievers in Missouri.

 **: : :**

Leon opened the farmhouse door and was immediately deluged with small black and gold bodies, their tails whumping against his legs with wild enthusiasm. “Hold your horses, you slobbering fiends,” he muttered, pulling out a fresh bag of dog food.

Denise from Animal Control had let him rent her grandparents’ old farmhouse for a pittance, relieved that she hadn’t had to execute nearly a hundred puppies. Leon paid for rent and dog food with the money he made stocking groceries at the local A&P and doing other odd jobs. When he wasn’t piling cans, he was looking for new owners for his charges. In the last three months he’d managed to find good homes for sixty of the dogs, leaving him with a more manageable twenty-three.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as he opened the bag to joyous yelps. “Tone it down, fuzzballs.” The puppies fell over each other, mock-growling and chewing on each others’ ears. “You guys are eating me out of house and home, such as it is. I can’t wait to get rid of the rest of you and shake the dust of this town off my feet.”

The two remaining adults hung back and let the puppies tackle the food. Even after three months their eyes retained a melancholy uncertainty which all the fresh farm air and good food in the world couldn’t seem to dispel. The puppies, on the other hand, had mostly become fat and happy. It had been pretty easy to find homes for them so far.

With one exception.

Leon looked over toward his bedroom and the gangly black puppy sitting in the doorway. “Dickweed, aren’t you gonna eat?” The puppy lifted its hackles and bared its tiny teeth at him. “Guess you’ll wait then, huh?”

One puppy in the pack had refused to warm up to Leon. It had a distinctive patch of white fur over its left eye--the result of a scar from a kick or something thrown--that gave it a perpetually dubious look. When Leon had tried to coax it out of its cage, it had snapped and snarled at him until Leon had left it alone. “Whatever, dickweed,” he had announced. From then on he had taken to calling the pup “Dickweed” or (when in a good mood) “Dick,” though addressing it only resulted in angry growls.

Leon collapsed on the ratty couch, staring at the water-stained ceiling. What the hell was he doing here? He was supposed to be looking for that damn Count D, not playing out some hayseed version of “101 Dalmatians.” A couple of times in the last year he’d felt tantalizingly close to his quarry: rumors of a strange pet shop, bizarre animals sighted. But the leads had melted away like snow every time.

Leon kicked the armrest of the couch petulantly. “God damn it, I’m wasting my time here!” One of the puppies hopped up onto his chest and plunked down, grinning at him. “ _You_ are wasting my time,” Leon announced to its golden eyes. “I need to get out of here and find that no-good Count, and _you_ are holding me back.” It licked his chin. “Ew, doggie breath.”

Five or six of the other puppies, their bellies full, clambered up onto the couch and draped themselves across Leon, panting contentedly. “Look at you,” Leon said in disgust. “You think I’m the greatest thing ever, don’t you?” A couple of the puppies cocked their heads at him and wriggled in delight at the sound of his voice. “Dickweed over there, he knows the truth,” Leon said. “Humans are scum. We’re _scum_ ,” he repeated vehemently, scratching an ecstatic puppy’s ear, “And you shouldn’t forget it.”

Dickweed growled in agreement, glaring from under his white lock of hair.

“You don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you, Dick. I wouldn’t trust me either, if someone’d treated me like you’ve been treated. So just go on hating me,” Leon said heavily. “I don’t blame you a bit.” He glared at the ceiling, remembering his last conversation with Chris.

“I don’t think he’s going to be easy to find,” Chris had said out of the blue while they were taking a walk around the pond one day.

“What? Who?” Leon still couldn’t get used to hearing Chris’s voice. It never sounded quite right to him, somehow.

“You’re going searching for him, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leon grumbled, kicking a rock.

“I’m glad,” Chris continued as if Leon had agreed with him. “But I don’t think you’ll find him unless he wants to be found.”

Leon had looked out at the pond, where a pair of ducks were circling each other, leaving ripples in their wake. He felt a hand slip into his and looked down to find Chris smiling up at him.

“Good luck, big bro,” Chris whispered, and Leon had found himself sweeping the kid up into a wordless hug. They hadn’t said anything more about it, but then, words hadn’t been necessary between them for a long time.

Leon sighed and one of the puppies complained sleepily about its resting place moving so much. “Oh yeah!” he exclaimed, sitting up in a cascade of annoyed puppies. “Better put up my little treat.” He rummaged in the shopping bags, pulling out a tube of paper. He’d finally made it to a mall and a Spencer Gifts where he could buy a poster for his bedroom. “Hey, I deserve this,” he said a bit defensively to the confused throng of dogs, brandishing the roll at them. “You guys aren’t exactly sexy company, you know.”

He went to the bedroom and started to unroll the poster, then paused, looking at the curious dogs. “Look, this is a private moment for Uncle Leon,” he said. “Not for the kiddies.” He shooed them from his room--a process that took a while, as they kept trickling back in. Dickweed staked out a place under the bed, growling furiously, and only scooted out when Leon threatened to crawl under and grab him. But at last the room was blissfully puppy-free, and Leon could unroll his prize.

“Actually, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking,” he grumbled as he straightened the glossy paper. He’d had his choice of dozens of hot blond babes in swimsuits--or less--and instead he’d ended up with a poster of some Asian pop idol in a _kimono_ , of all things. “Well, what the hell, it’s better than nothing,” Leon said philosophically as he taped it to the ceiling so she was looking down at him.

He lay down on the sagging mattress and looked up at whats-her-name. She had black hair that fell like a curtain over one eye, and was looking over her shoulder, smiling backward at the camera. The kimono was slipping off, revealing one bare shoulder. “What the fuck,” Leon said out loud, disgusted at himself. “She doesn’t even have any tits. Waste of my seven dollars.” The kimono was some cheap gaudy thing, all hot pink and gold. It should be something darker, Leon thought vaguely. Maroon or rose, something muted and mysterious. And in silk, not that crap shiny stuff. Something softer and richer, that whispered as it moved. Something that would made the bare skin beneath it shine like ivory or pearl, something that would make your fingers ache to caress it, to move to that glimpse of skin and touch its satiny sheen. It would be smooth under your fingers, under your lips.

The voice would be low and lilting, filled with sly laughter. “Leon,” it would murmur. “My dear Leon.” Leon took a deep breath, trying to imagine the scent of that lustrous hair, the gleaming skin. It would be something familiar, something that teased the corners of his memory like wisps of smoke, twining in the air, gone before he could remember it clearly. Something enigmatic and secret as the laughter in that smile.

“My dear detective,” murmured the voice in his memory, beguiling and amused, and Leon slipped into uneasy dreams with the lost fragrance of that voice still haunting him.

 **: : :**

He woke to the sound of howling and the smell of smoke. Scrambling from his bed, he opened the bedroom door to stare into a scene from Hell.

Flames were licking up the far wall, leaping greedily at the ceiling. The air was filled with acrid smoke and the sound of terrified dogs. _”Fuck!”_ Leon charged into the living room and scooped up four cowering puppies, opening the back door with one vicious kick. The flames roared eagerly at the fresh influx of air as Leon dashed out into the night. He dropped the howling puppies on the ground and whirled to run back into the blazing house.

Three trips into the inferno and back later, Leon’s lungs were aching, torn with smoke. Holding back the racking coughs that threatened to obscure his vision, he scanned the crowd of black and yellow dogs, trying to count as they yelped and trembled. “Twenty-two? _Twenty-two?_ ”

Leon couldn’t find the distinctive face with the white patch above its eye anywhere.

The house was a mass of flame now. “Dickweed!” he screamed above the angry roar, staggering through the living room. “Dickweed, where the hell are you?” His eyes were streaming, blinded with smoke. He wished, fleetingly, he’d given the little dog a less stupid name, but he’d never expected he’d have to run through a burning house calling for “Dickweed.”

In his bedroom, he heard a faint whine, barely audible under the flames. Under the bed! Leon dropped to his knees to reach under the bed--and heard the rumble of collapsing beams a second before he tried to roll away.

Tried.

The blazing timber caught him across the back, pinning him to the ground. Blistering heat seared along his spine. He could smell burning hair--and worse. _No! Not now! Not yet!_ The flames licking at him didn’t seem to care about his protests.

Somewhere nearby he could hear a child’s frantic voice, desperately yelling. “Here! Here! Help! He’s here! Help! Help him! He’s here!” _What the fuck is a kid doing here?_ He tried to struggle to his feet, to get to the lost little voice, but he couldn’t seem to move anymore. He was nothing but a blaze of pain, trapped and helpless.

As fiery darkness closed around him, he thought for just a moment he caught a hint of that half-remembered perfume under the smoke. It smelled of sandalwood and musk, sweet and bitter as the world slipped away.

 **: : :**

There were voices, blurry and far away, distorted by pain.

”It’s pretty bad,” said one voice, a rough male voice with a slight accent. “I don’t know--”

“Just bring him.” The second voice was low but commanding. It was familiar, like a dream. But he wasn’t asleep. He was--

He felt himself being lifted and a wave of agony shattered across him.

”Be careful,” said the second voice.

“Don’t worry,” snorted the first. “I like my food a little less crispy.”

Someone new spoke, a girl, high and sweet. “Will he live? He looks...”

“I know,” said the most familiar voice. “But he will live. He must.” For the first time, emotion flickered through the voice, touching it with anguish. “He _must._ ”

Leon tried to open his eyes, but got only a vague, blurred impression of the person carrying him: shaggy orange hair and--that _couldn’t_ be a horn on its head.

A fresh wave of pain broke over him and dragged him under once more.

 **: : :**

Before he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that the pain was gone. Not fading, not in the background--gone.

The second thing he noticed was the incense.

It hung in the air, heavy and sweet as his memories. Leon took a deep breath of it, letting it fill him, familiar and obscure at once. Musk and orchids and moss, like a deep wood with something hiding within.

He heard a pleased chuckle and opened his eyes to see Count D standing over him.

Leon sat up so quickly D had to move away to avoid banging heads with him. He realized to his horror that he was entirely naked, covered only by a crimson silk sheet. He wrapped it more tightly around himself. “What the hell?” he yelled. “What am I doing here?”

D looked exactly the same as the last time Leon had seen him. No--that wasn’t true. He had the same small smile, the same luminous mismatched eyes. But he looked tired, and more pale than usual. Still, he was smiling, covering his mouth with tapered fingers, red nails glinting. “My dear detective,” he said, his voice like honey, and Leon bunched his hands in the red silk angrily to cover up the frisson that went up his spine at the sound. “It seems the man who had previously imprisoned your companions decided to take some misguided vengeance on you via a can of kerosene and a pack of matches.”

“The puppies,” Leon said, remembering smoke and flames. “Where are they? Are they okay?”

D stepped aside and Leon saw a little boy standing in the doorway. He was wearing a black velvet suit that looked like something from a vintage photograph, his huge brown eyes staring at Leon from under a shock of dark hair.

Dark hair with one white lock in it, hanging over his eye.

He stared at Leon, then his mouth twitched in something like a smile. Turning, he ran from the room.

“Your friends are all safe,” said D. “They have had a good meal and are resting.”

“Where’s the bastard who tried to kill them?”

D’s only answer was a smile that was satisfied and far from pleasant.

He turned from Leon and moved to a small table laden with china. He was wearing a black silk dress embroidered with blood-red poppies, and it whispered as he moved. Leon couldn’t seem to help but follow that movement with his eyes, the way the incense smoke twined around it. “Would you like some sweets, Mr. Detective?”

“What I’d like is a fucking bathrobe or something, for Chrissakes!”

D made a small moue of disappointment, but reached into an ornate Chinese cabinet and handed Leon a navy blue robe of heavy silk. Leon shrugged it on, belting it resolutely. The cut seemed designed to reveal a great deal of chest, but there was nothing to be done about that.

“Now are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, D?”

A languid shrug which made the dress ripple in interesting ways. “Whatever do you mean?”

Leon held up a hand, ticking off points. “One: What are you doing here? Two: Don’t bullshit me, I was _dying_ when you and your buddies pulled me out of that fire. So explain _this_ ,” he said, gesturing at his unscarred chest.

“Oh, I would _love_ to,” D murmured, gazing at Leon’s chest in a way that was...disturbingly appreciative. “But some things are just ineffable.”

“Damn it, D, be serious for a moment. What the hell did you do?”

“What I had to.” The smile slipped away and left D’s face pale and drawn. “There was...a price to pay. There always is. But I wasn’t going to let you die. Not when I finally--” He broke off and turned his back on Leon, going to the table. When he swiveled back around, his face was cheerful and bright again. “You _must_ try these strawberry tarts, Mr. Detective!” He held up a little red sweet and gestured as if to pop it into Leon’s mouth.

Leon ignored the tart, trying to lock eyes with D’s furtive gaze. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

D lowered the tart, still smiling merrily. “I know. I am a dangerous fugitive, after all.”

“That’s not why,” Leon said. D’s eyes widened, but he didn’t look at Leon. “Chris said I wouldn’t find you unless you wanted to be found,” Leon went on. “So why now?”

D put the tart back down on its plate with fastidious care. “I had things I needed to learn,” he said, his back to Leon. “Before I could see you again.”

That wasn’t what Leon had expected to hear. “Things to learn?” he repeated blankly. “Like...what?”

D moved across the room, sweet-scented smoke eddying in his path, to stand in front of Leon again. He wasn’t smiling, and he looked tired and worried and...vulnerable. He looked at Leon, and Leon had to resist the urge to reach out and brush back that curtain of hair so he could see the unearthly golden eye directly. “Like this,” he said, almost inaudibly,

He put his mouth to Leon’s, the curve of his lips hot and sweet as opium and cherries. As Leon sat in stunned silence, D sighed against his mouth and broke the kiss slowly. “My dearest detective,” he murmured. His voice trembled faintly. “Forgive me, but I have wanted to do that for so long. But I didn’t--I couldn’t--”

Before he could finish the sentence, Leon surged forward, capturing D’s mouth in a clumsy, almost desperate kiss. His arms went around him, and he could feel the terrifying, inhuman strength in the slender body as D made a sharp, wordless sound and pulled him close.

They staggered backwards, locked in a bruising, fervent embrace, D’s hands slipping inside the silk bathrobe, cool and fiery. The table came up hard against the back of Leon’s legs; he fell backwards and china crashed everywhere in a mad cacophony that he hardly noticed, because D’s hands were on the sash of his bathrobe and his teeth were nipping at Leon’s bare collarbone. Leon groaned and yanked D onto him, causing a new cascade of silverware and broken plates.

“Oh, you brute,” D whispered. His voice was full of delighted laughter, like he was bestowing the greatest compliment he could imagine. He pulled Leon close again for another kiss.

“You _animal._ ”


End file.
